Portable and handheld electrical devices are a staple of modern society. Every day, millions of people use laptop computers, cellular telephones, digital music players and personal data assistants (PDAs). As technology and innovation progress, electrical devices become more portable and processors become faster. As a result, devices have an increasing number of features and more complex menu systems, despite getting smaller, even handheld.
One handheld device was recently lauded as being revolutionary for successfully combining, among other things, a cellular phone, wireless internet connectivity, a media player, and a touch screen. That device is Apple Inc.'s iPhone™. (Apple Inc. owns the iPhone™ trademark.) Although many of the features had been previously integrated in its larger brethren (some of which were portable but not handheld), the iPhone™ device was lauded as revolutionary, largely because Apple Inc. figured out how to integrate those features (in addition to others) in a handheld device.
Handheld devices can utilize a number of different means for receiving user inputs. For example, the iPhone™ includes a multi-touch display screen. Most other cellular telephones include a QWERTY keypad and/or number pad. Some devices, like BlackBerrys™, also include a scroll wheel and/or scroll ball. (BlackBerry™ is a service mark owned by Research In Motion Limited Corporation.) As yet another example, iPods™ include click wheels. (iPod™ is a trademark owned by Apple Inc.)
All of these components receive some sort of touch-based, physical stimulus that is converted to electrical data signals. The data signals can be used to control the functionality of the electrical device. For example, the data signals can cause the electrical device to make a telephone call, present an informational or media display, take a picture, and/or perform any other function that the device is configured to allow a user to control. A user can even use a the touch screen display to navigate among and select options associated with information and media available on the Internet. In response to the user selecting an option, the device can send a request to the server, which can return data that is processed by the handheld device into displayable information.
Prior to the invention, obtaining some information and media from the Internet was too expensive (with regards to bandwidth and battery requirements) and limited some devices as to the types of media and information the devices could present for the user. For example, YouTube™ videos could not be viewed by all handheld devices (even those with web browsers). (YouTube™ is a trademark owned by Google Inc.)